LeSports (LeEco Sports)
The business, the turning points, and the decisions behind them.
01 / WHAT IT BUILT
What the company did
LeSports was the sports-streaming and events arm of LeEco, founded in 2014. It bought up broadcast rights for major competitions, including the NBA, English Premier League, Chinese Super League, AFC Champions League and UEFA Champions League, and streamed them to Chinese audiences. Its 2016 fundraising valued it at 21.5 billion yuan.
02 / LeSports (LeEco Sports) FAILURE REASONS
Failure reasons
LeSports spent far beyond its means on rights: it laid out 1.35 billion yuan on broadcast rights in 2016 while generating little income, and by the end of that year most rights fees were unpaid. Parent LeEco drained about 4 billion yuan from its accounts, starving it of cash. When LeEco's own debt crisis exploded, LeSports lost its Super League and AFC rights, and the failed-IPO buyback guarantees to investors turned into billions of yuan in claims.
03 / EVENT HISTORY
Events in the structured record
- Operations ended
Chaoyang SAMR revoked the business license of LeSports Culture Development (Beijing) Co. on 20 May 2019 for operating without opening for over six months or self-ceasing operations for over six consecutive months—formal ending of the mainland sports-streaming entity.
04 / CONTEMPORARY REBUILD ASSESSMENT
Difficulty of rebuilding this project today
Material for this section is being gathered and checked. It will appear here once ready.
Overall assessment: Not completed
05 / CAUSAL CHAIN
How the factors connect
- 01
Raised 8.4 billion yuan in 2015 and 2016; about half was taken by parent LeEco.
- 02
Spent 1.35 billion yuan on rights in 2016; by year-end most rights fees were in arrears.
- 03
Cut 10% of its roughly 1,000 staff in December 2016.
- 04
Lost Chinese Super League and AFC Champions League rights in 2017 over payment defaults.
- 05
Missed the December 31, 2018 IPO deadline, triggering investor buyback guarantees and arbitration claims.
- 06
No public loss figure was disclosed.